If America's Military Loses World War III, Low Readiness Will Likely Be The Reason

A congressionally-chartered commission on defense strategy yesterday released its call for increased military spending into a very unpromising fiscal and political landscape. With the government poised to borrow $1.3 trillion this year and resurgent Democrats eager to increase domestic spending, the prospects for additional Pentagon funding are bleak. Having already raised annual military outlays by an amount greater than the entire defense budget of Germany, President Trump has done as much as can be expected to rebuild the joint force.

The commission warns that America might lose a multi-front war in the future, arguing that Russia and China are striving for hegemony in their regions. However, that possibility can hardly be attributed to depressed U.S. military spending. At roughly $2 billion per day, the U.S. greatly outspends all of its potential rivals combined. Its technology and training are far superior. None of Washington's competitors enjoy the global reach and power afforded by continuing investments in areas such as amphibious warfare, precision strike and aerial refueling.

The fundamental problem U.S. military planners face is that in any future great-power conflict, Russia and China will be fighting close to home, and America will not. The commission rightly contends that "forward deploying" U.S. forces near potential war zones is essential to deterrence. But it doesn't have much to say about how Washington can persuade its allies to spend more money on the common defense, and it dodges the difficult question of how U.S. military outlays could be increased under current fiscal circumstances.

So let's assume that the allies don't change and the Trump Administration holds to its plan of keeping the buying power of the Pentagon's budget at today’s level in future years. What can be done to reduce the danger of losing the next big war? The answer is to improve military readiness. Readiness is one of those concepts that pundits use promiscuously to mean all sorts of different things -- more training, more forces, more weapons. What it should mean, first and foremost, is: are we ready to fight tonight? Can we react quickly to aggression?

The F/A-18 Super Hornet is the most successful carrier-based fighter the Navy has ever operated, but new ideas are needed to keep pilots and planes in a high state of readiness.

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Many of our ideas about future military campaigns are grounded in the assumption that wars will remain protracted affairs. But that isn't the way Moscow and Beijing are likely to pursue military gains in their areas. Their best hope of succeeding is to move fast, and then present Washington with a fait accompli before it can react. Think of Russia invading the Baltic states, or China seizing Taiwan. Once the attackers have seized their initial objectives, it would be hard to dislodge them without contemplating the risky step of resorting to nuclear weapons.

Since President Trump -- unlike President Obama -- has expressed no willingness to risk New York for the sake of Riga in a nuclear confrontation, it is easy to imagine our adversaries prevailing in a quick land grab. The only way to prevent that from happening would be if U.S. forces were nearby and ready on very short notice to block aggression without resorting to weapons of mass destruction. So readiness is central to whether America wins or loses.

Unfortunately, readiness doesn't get the attention it should. Many of the metrics measuring how ready the military is indicate decay in recent years. Training time for pilots is down. Maintenance backlogs are growing. Spare parts are in short supply. Operators are losing their edge, and experienced support technicians are leaving military service. So it would be challenging to quickly mobilize the nation's vast investment in military personnel and equipment if Russia or China made military moves.

This isn't just about money, it is also about the priorities of military leaders and the structure of incentives within which budget planners operate. The prevailing bias is to maintain force structure even if it is under-prepared and inadequately equipped, when what we really need in the environment the commission describes is a force ready to fight right away. Congress gets frequent, lengthy reports about the readiness of the joint force, but with the exception of a few legislators like Ohio's Mike Turner, it doesn't seem to pay attention to what the reports are saying.

If Washington wants to win the next war, it needs to fix its military readiness problem. That means making the metrics we use to track readiness more rigorous, and then enforcing standards that assure acceptable levels of preparedness are sustained. It also means developing new ideas about public-private partnerships for maintaining equipment and conducting training that don't require lots of additional funding.

The defense budget is probably stuck around $700 billion annually for the remainder of the Trump years, but we can do a better job of using that money wisely. Focusing on the joint force's readiness to fight quickly and effectively would be a good place to start.